It was with a curious feeling in his heart that he presently arrived at the little farmhouse where his mother was born and reared. In spite of the fact that he was a country lad, he had never realised the meaning of loneliness as he realised it now. No other house was near; the little farmhouse was the only building in sight. As far as the eye could reach, beyond the few acres of land which had been reclaimed from the moors, there seemed to him nothing but wild desolation. Hill rose upon hill, and while the scene was almost majestic, it made him understand how lonely his mother's life must have been. He stood for several minutes looking at the house before entering. He did not know whether his grandfather was living or not, and for the first time it struck him that he might have relatives living there, to whose existence he had previously been indifferent. The day was as still as death, and it seemed to him as though the place were uninhabited. Presently, however, he heard the sound of a human voice, and, turning, he saw a rough-looking lad driving some cattle before him. The lad eyed him strangely as he came up to the little farm buildings, and seemed to wonder why he should be there. The time was evening, an evening of late summer, and Paul remembered that it was in the late summer-time when Douglas Graham, his father, had first come into the district. He called to mind, too, that he had seen his mother as she was driving home the cattle from the moors.

He watched the lad almost furtively, and he wondered why it was that he was afraid to speak. It seemed to him as though some mysterious power were brooding over this lonely dwelling and forbidding him to learn the secrets that lay within.

"Does Donald Lindsay live here?" he asked presently.

The lad looked at him for a few seconds before replying, and then, in his strong Scotch accent, replied, "Nay. He's dead."

"And Mrs. Lindsay, is she alive?"

"Ay," replied the lad. "She'll be inside. She's my mother."

Paul remembered his own mother's story about this hard Scotswoman's unkindness, and felt little disposed to go into the house; yet, for the sake of learning what he had come to learn, he determined to enter. The cottage, for it was little more than a cottage, was clean, but comfortless and bare of any adornment whatever. It might seem as though no woman entered this building, for there were no marks of a woman's handicraft, none of those little suggestions of the feminine presence.

"Mother!" shouted the youth. "There's someone wants you."

A minute later Paul heard a heavy step on the uncarpeted stairway, and a tall, angular, hard-featured woman, with cold blue eyes and scanty light hair, entered the room. She looked at him steadily, as if there was something in his face that she recognised.

"And what might ye be wantin'?" she asked presently. "Ye'll not be from these parts, I fancy."

"No," said Paul. "I came from England. I was born and reared in Cornwall. Years ago, a man named Donald Lindsay came there and married into my family. I was wanting to find out something about him."

He knew it was a clumsy explanation of his appearance there, but it was the best he could think of for the moment.

"What'll you be to Donald Lindsay?" asked the woman, as she scanned him closely. "He died two years since, and it's getting on for forty years ago since he was down South. He's told me about it many a time. You're in no way related to him, are you?"

And then, giving him a second glance, she went on:

"No, no, you're no Lindsay. Donald was blue-eyed and fair-haired, and you are black-eyed and black-haired."

"But did not Donald have a daughter?" asked Paul. "You see, I've heard he married a Cornish girl, and that they had a daughter. Did you know her? Did she ever live here?"

"What's that to you?" asked the woman. "You don't mean to say that there's any siller coming to her?"

"I don't say but what there is," replied Paul, seeing that this might be the key which might help to unlock the mystery of his mother's life.

"And are you a lawyer chap?"

"Do I look like a lawyer?" he asked with a laugh. He was wanting to get the woman into a communicative mood.

"You might be," she replied. "You're just one of those keen-eyed men of the lawyer cla.s.s, but I ken nothing about her, except that she's dead."

"Who's dead?" asked Paul.

"Donald's la.s.s, Jean," was the reply. "She that was born to his first wife. And a good thing, too!" she added vindictively.

"Why a good thing?" asked the young man.

"Better dead than disgraced," replied the woman in her hard Scotch fashion. And Paul understood the fear that his mother must have had of this woman whom her father had placed in authority over her. A pain shot through his heart, and he felt like answering the woman angrily. Ever since their meeting on the Altarnun Moors Paul had been keenly sensitive about his mother's good name, and resented any approach to light words concerning her.

"I am trying to find out all about her," he said presently. "And I would be very glad if you could give me any information concerning her childhood and girlhood up here."

"Why should I?" asked the woman. "It'll not be to my advantage."

"Please don't be so sure of that," replied Paul. He knew instinctively that she was avaricious by nature, and would be likely to do anything for gain.

"You wouldn't thank me for telling," she replied.

"If you promise to tell me all you know," said Paul, "I am empowered to give you five guineas."

"And it'll get me into no trouble?" she asked, with that suggestion of Scotch caution of which Paul had so often heard.

"No," replied he, "your name need never be mentioned; but I'm anxious to find out all I can concerning the childhood and girlhood of Jean Lindsay up to the time of her marriage."

"Her marriage!" said the woman scornfully. "Weel, it may be she was married, after all, and it may be I was hard on her, and it may be, too, it was because I thought Donald cared more for her than for my children.

Anyhow, she never liked me, and I don't say that I liked her. She was a good la.s.s as la.s.ses go, although never tractable--always stubborn. An unnatural way she had with her, too: she always wanted to be out on the moors alone, and I used to tell Donald it would never come to any good.

She might have married well. Willie Fearn, who owns a farm over the moors here, would have had her, and he's worth thousands of pounds now, is Willie. But she would have nothing to say to him. One day I saw a stranger coming up the path with her, one of these handsome Southerners, and they used to meet in secret, and I suppose he courted her. Anyhow, she ran away with him, or said she did, and then came back the next day telling us that she was married."

"Yes?" said Paul eagerly. He knew all this before, but it seemed to him as though he was getting nearer the truth that he longed to learn. "And did she stay with you long?"

"Not long," replied the woman. "You see----" And a look almost of shame came into her eyes. "Well, she stayed as long as she dared."

"And have you heard what has become of her since?" he asked.

"We've heard that she died. We've no proof of it, but we saw in the papers a few weeks afterwards that a girl was found dead, and from the description given of her we concluded that it was Jean."

"But did you not try and find out?" he asked. "Surely your husband would not be so callous towards his daughter?"

"My husband did what I told him," she said. "Besides, the girl had disgraced herself, and we did not want to be dragged into it. Mind, I'm not sure, after all, but what she was properly married, and it may be I did wrong. But there it is--she's dead."

"And did you hear anything more--have you ever heard anything more about this young Southerner?"

"Well, we are not so sure about that," replied the woman. "You see, I never saw him but once before the time Jean said he married her, and so I cannot swear to him anywhere. But some time after Jean left a man came here, and, in a roundabout way, he found out what we knew about her."

"And did you tell him she was dead?"

"I told him just what I've told you," replied the woman.

"And how did he take the news?" asked Paul.

"Oh, nothing particular," replied the woman. "He just went on talking about something else, but I believe that was a bit of make-up."

"Wasn't he a friend of the Grahams at a house called 'Highlands'?" asked Paul presently.

"I believe there were some people called Graham at the time. It is said that they came there for their summer holidays, but they left before we had guessed about Jean's trouble, and so we could never find out anything about them."

"What kind of a man was he--I mean the one who came asking questions?"

"Oh, a middle-aged man, perhaps forty or fifty. He had iron-grey whiskers, and he was bald, I remember."